by David Wragg
Despite the onset of winter, Hitler was pressing for action in the west. With the two Allies now at war with Germany, and the United States passing legislation that would allow both countries to buy arms and ammunition from the United States, time was not on Germany’s side. There was also the danger, Hitler argued in a memorandum on the conduct of war in the west, that if delayed too long, the United States could well intervene. Memories of US involvement in the First World War were still fresh. Only in the air had American involvement in the First World War been weak, but the arrival of US troops in France had boosted Allied morale, and the Americans had been quick to send warships to Ireland and had even attached a battle squadron to the Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet, while also pressing for the introduction of a convoy system.
In theory, the legislation passed in the United States could have enabled Germany to also buy American equipment. Nevertheless, a factor in the passing of the legislation through Congress was the anger aroused by the invasion of Poland, and Germany was fast becoming a pariah. Before the days of ‘Lend-Lease’, the conditions attached to the sale were described as ‘cash and carry’, meaning that armaments had to be paid for in cash and transported in the customer’s own ships. Germany lacked the foreign exchange and would have been unable to protect her ships on the voyage across the North Atlantic. The Wehrmacht estimated that the combined purchasing power of the United Kingdom and France amounted to US $7.37 billion (£1.9 billion at the prevailing rate of exchange), while Germany would have struggled to raise as much as US $700 million.
WEAKNESSES
Yet, despite the ease with which Polish resistance had been suppressed, all had not gone well in the Polish campaign. Serious weaknesses in the training of troops had been exposed, especially amongst mobilised reserve units, which at times had suffered incidents when troops under fire had panicked.
Hitler had also been disappointed that Italy was proving lukewarm about war, and he was still not certain whether Japan would join Germany, even though the advantages to that country were considerable, not least because she could gain the oil and rubber of the British Empire and the oil of the Dutch. He realised that his new ally, the Soviet Union, would be unreliable in a prolonged war. In fact the alliance was a temporary expedient, buying time for the Russians and enabling Germany to continue to receive supplies from the east, but in military terms, it was simply a case of dividing Polish territory.
Hitler’s case for striking now, regardless of the winter weather, was in many ways impeccable. The longer he waited, the worse the German economic situation would become and the better equipped his enemies would be. There was just one major problem; indeed, it was an overwhelming problem, a chronic shortage of ammunition. This was the consequence of the reduced allocations of steel and copper experienced earlier in the year. The Luftwaffe alone had used most of its stock of bombs simply to support the invasion of Poland. During September, consumption of bombs had exceeded production sevenfold. Even while still assembling their forces in France, the British and French would still be a far more potent opponent than the Poles.
While the image of the Panzer armoured formations was one of modern tanks and efficiency, even if the numbers deployed were far less than the original rearmament programme would have wanted, the true story was that these too suffered weaknesses. In less than a month of fighting, a quarter of the tanks had either been knocked out or had simply broken down. Most of the tanks used were Mark I and Mark IIs, obsolescent and clearly unsuitable for a prolonged campaign in the west. The German Army feared the French Char B, at the time the world’s best tank. It was also the case that the combined strength of the British, French, Dutch and Belgian armies was, at least theoretically, a match for the Germans in manpower and equipment. On the other hand, the Low Countries were placing their faith in neutrality, and even the British and French had not exercised together.
The hastily prepared German plans for attack in the west were simply an updated version of those used for the First World War. Given more modern equipment and Luftwaffe support, they envisaged a rapid advance to the Channel Coast to provide bases for the Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine, but failed to provide a means of destroying the French Army. It is interesting that the Germans envisaged a war similar to that of the First World War, for this was also the assumption of the British and the French.
General Werner von Brauchitsch, Commander-in-Chief of the Army, pleaded for more time. They needed to re-equip and retrain, rebuild ammunition stocks, and in addition move as many troops as they dared from Poland to the west. Given the poor state of the railways and the lack of mechanised transport within the Army, this last was no easy feat. They also needed another million troops. Even at this early stage of the war, Hitler ignored their advice. He insisted that the offensive against France and the Low Countries should begin in early November.
Brauchitsch had as chief-of-staff General Franz Halder. Halder had been appointed in 1938 after the resignation of his predecessor General Ludwig Beck, who resigned after failing to unite the Army’s senior officers in a collective stand against Hitler’s plans for Czechoslovakia. As with others opposed to the breakneck pace and the strains of the rearmament programme, Beck had not opposed Hitler’s ultimate objectives, but had opposed the timing and felt that rearmament should proceed more slowly, placing less strain on the economy and not provoking an arms race with the United Kingdom and France. Now, in late 1939, Halder was also sounding out opinion over resistance to Hitler. He toured the commanders of the three army groups to sound out their opinions on an immediate attack in the west, and amongst those he could trust, he sought their opinions on a military-led coup d’etat to overthrow the Nazi regime.
Meanwhile, tension between Brauchitsch and Hitler rose steadily. On 5 November, the two men met. Brauchitsch, feted as a hero for his victory in Poland and ever the consummate professional, went armed with statistics prepared by the Quartermaster General, General Eduard Wagner, which detailed the poor state of the army’s equipment and stockpiles of supplies. He reported the true state of the army to the Fuhrer, who listened impatiently, and when Brauchitsch has finished, he was subjected to a devastating tirade. For the rest of the day, Hitler fumed over the ‘sabotage of the army command’. His commander-in-chief was sufficiently shaken by Hitler’s outburst to have left the meeting shaking. He immediately put Halder in the picture, who feared that the Gestapo had discovered his plans. He destroyed the incriminating evidence immediately, and without his leadership and coordination, the coup d’etat was over. Just how close Hitler came to being assassinated is still difficult to assess, but Halder met Hitler almost daily and later confided to an associate that he attended those meeting with a loaded pistol in his pocket and firmly intended to shoot ‘Emil down’. ‘Emil’ was the code-name for Hitler. Many believe that what saved Hitler during those crucial meetings in autumn 1939 was Halder’s sense of duty making it difficult for him, a professional soldier, to kill the man to whom he had pledged an oath of loyalty.
The date set for the invasion of France and the Low Countries was 12 November 1939, but the onset of the winter weather intervened. The concept of Blitzkrieg, literally ‘lightening war’, demanded that the air force and army operated together concentrating overwhelming force, but the weather grounded the Luftwaffe, and without it, the invasion could not go ahead. Even Hitler had to accept this.
A growing body of historians now believe that the delay saved Hitler, at least for another five and a half years. There were chronic weaknesses in the army and the air force that would have made victory in the west anything but inevitable, for while the air force had technical superiority over the two Allies, with the Royal Air Force even operating Gloster Gladiator biplanes in France, the Luftwaffe was, as already mentioned, chronically short of bombs, while the army was short of shells and trained men. Worse, Hitler could still not count on the unswerving support of the German people, who would soon fall in behind the regime under the pressures of war, the early victories and A
llied bombing. Had the German people any idea of what was to be expected of them in the years ahead shortly after the outbreak of war in 1939, there would have been a very real danger of a mass uprising. Had the army known about the horrors of the Eastern Front, and the disaster that followed the capitulation at Stalingrad, then the nightmare of the Soviet occupation and the rape of Berlin, mutiny would have been inevitable.
As it was, the situation in economic and industrial terms was worsening. There was almost no oil or copper being imported while ore shipments from Sweden, via the Norwegian port of Narvik, were cut off. Overall imports were cut by around 80 per cent. The ore had to come via Narvik rather than direct from Sweden because the Gulf of Bothnia froze in winter. Sweden provided 83 per cent of Germany’s iron ore, paid for by shipments of coal. A similar arrangement worked, but for precision machine tools and Oerlikon anti-aircraft guns, with Switzerland, also dependent on German coal. The impact of economic sanctions and British blockading was not unexpected. Hitler knew that Germany could only survive a short war having neither the money nor the natural resources for a sustained war of attrition over many years. Protests from the Gauleiters, charged with being the link between the Fuhrer and the civilian population, forced Walther Funk, by this time Minister for Economic Affairs, to desist from a programme of draconian mobilisation. He then tried to present his changes as a plan for moderation in mobilisation, and by the end of the year found himself stripped of his responsibilities for organising the civilian economy.
There were those who thought that with careful management of the economy, Germany might last a three year war. Once again, comparisons were made with the First World War. The reason why no one expected Germany to survive as long as she had in the earlier conflict was not simply memories of the starvation of 1918, but a realisation that the German economy was in an even worse state in 1939 than it had been in 1914. In the earlier conflict, Germany had also access to the resources of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but in 1939, much of this was cut off.
By ‘careful management’, what was planned was a defensive posture for the armed forces rather than all-out war. In fact, this was completely unrealistic. Great Britain and France could simply continue rearming and wait for Germany to collapse. Only if peace could be gained through diplomacy could this strategy work, which would have meant the two Allies accepting Germany’s seizure of Poland.
STRIKING WEST
Before invading France and the Low Countries, Germany had to secure her supplies of iron ore. Hitler feared a British Expeditionary Force landing in Norway to take control of the port of Narvik. He decided that both Denmark and Norway would be occupied, ensuring that supplies could continue and also giving him control over the Skagerrak and Kattegat, the straits that linked the North Sea and the Baltic. The invasion of Denmark was relatively easy, but the Norwegians had time to implement a defence plan and the British, and then the French, had time to land an expeditionary force, with fighting beginning on 9 April and lasting for three months, before the Germans achieved their objectives, by which time the British and French had decided, too late, to withdraw their forces to reinforce those engaged in the Battle of France.
The invasion of Norway saw the Kriegsmarine suffer heavy losses amongst its small force of destroyers and also the light cruiser Konigsberg suffered the unwanted distinction of being the first major operational warship to be sunk by aerial attack. The attack was by the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm, although the aircraft were shore-based rather than carrier-borne. No doubt the loss of the British aircraft carrier, HMS Glorious, with most of those aboard, to the battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, during the withdrawal from Norway, more than compensated for the loss of a light cruiser and ten destroyers. On the other hand, earlier, the British battlecruiser Renown had inflicted serious damage on Gneisenau on 9 April, with her main armament put out of action, and had a German aircraft carrier been available, it might conceivably have turned the tables. The Panzerschiff Lutzow was torpedoed by the British submarine Spearfish on 11 April, and although she wasn’t sunk, doubtless there was a sigh of relief in the upper echelons of the Kriegsmarine that her name had already been changed from Deutschland. Nevertheless, the Germans gave a good account of themselves during the Norwegian campaign, sinking one British aircraft carrier, two cruisers, six destroyers, a sloop and four submarines.
Meanwhile, Hitler had acted to safeguard the Reich’s oil supplies. In March 1940, he offered King Carol of Romania protection against the Soviet Union. At this time, the USSR was, at least on paper, Germany’s main ally. Despite the needs of the armed forces, oil was more important, so the Romanians were offered arms for oil, but most of the arms were those taken from the Poles while the oil was to be sold at preferential prices. An interim agreement was intended to pave the way for a longer term deal, which happened to be negotiated just as France was on the verge of surrender. In fact, this proved to be a master stroke, with Germany granted a monopoly of Romanian oil supplies, while the United Kingdom, which had previously taken 40 per cent of Romanian production, lost these supplies virtually overnight.
Whatever the stresses and strains to which the German economy was being subjected, no matter how thin the margin of ammunition and fuel stocks for the German armed forces, the country had once again established itself as the supreme continental power, and the weaker states of Southern Europe hastened to get on the right side of the continent’s proven strong man, Hitler. Mussolini, whose hesitation in entering the war had perplexed and frustrated Hitler, at one time an admirer, declared war on Great Britain and France on 10 June 1940. Hitler may have been pleased by this, but his military men were cynical, dubbing the Italians the ‘harvest hands’. In a hint of things to come, Mussolini invaded the South of France, and demanded support from the Luftwaffe despite having a powerful air force of his own.
Still suffering from the ravages of the Civil War, Spain was in no state to declare war, but Franco shifted his stance from strict neutrality to one of a non-combatant state.
Neutral Switzerland had a significant number who argued for a reassessment of neutrality, and while the country did not join the Axis camp, it provided still more generous trade credits to Berlin and restricted strategic exports to the United Kingdom. Switzerland still depended on German coal, having few natural resources of its own, and also managed to buy German aircraft for its air force. The Germans in return received high quality precision machine tools and instruments as well as Oerlikon anti-aircraft guns.
The massive advance in the West had given the Germans not just territory, but bases in France for the Kriegsmarine and for the Luftwaffe. Commerce raiding by U-boats and surface vessels from French ports was now a practicality, while the United Kingdom, even as far west as Belfast, was within range of German bombers. No less important were the strategic industries gained in the Netherlands, Belgium and, most of all, northern France, added to those of Czechoslovakia. Not only did Germany gain Swedish iron ore shipped through Norway, it also gained Norwegian and French aluminium production.
Had production in all of the industries in this new German empire or Grossraum been producing at prewar levels, the combined output would have been greater than that of either the British Empire or the United States, while the land area was almost as great as that of the USA and the population, at 292 million people, even larger.
There were other gains as well. The German railways had been neglected in the rush to rearm, even though they were of vital strategic importance in war as in peace. In 1939, it had fewer goods vehicles than in 1922. The best rolling stock from the Low Countries and France was quickly transferred to Germany. The German Army hastened to seize French artillery and motor vehicles. All in all, no less than 5,017 French artillery pieces were seized, with 3.9 million shells and 2,170 tanks, while there were also 314,878 rifles. Even as late as March 1944, no less than 47 per cent of the German Army’s artillery was of captured foreign origin, mainly French.
And of course, with Plan Z in abeyan
ce, there was the Marine Nationale, the French Navy. It was a mixed bag, but there were also some excellent vessels, including new battlecruisers and the large, fast contre-torpilleur destroyers, while there was also an elderly aircraft carrier and even an aircraft-carrying submarine.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Comparing the Navies in 1939
‘Finally, let it be remembered that when the present naval rearmament is completed in about 1940 our figures will be 21 capital ships as against 68 in 1914, 69 cruisers as against 103 and 190 torpedo craft as against 319.
‘With the exception of Germany, every other leading navy will be substantially stronger than before the last war.’
So wrote Lt-Cdr E. C. Talbot-Booth, editor of the magazine Merchant Ships, on the eve of war in 1939.
For comparison, in September 1939, the Kriegsmarine had:
2 elderly battleships plus 2 building
2 battlecruisers
3 armoured cruisers
3 heavy cruisers
6 light cruisers
22 destroyers
20 torpedo boats and small destroyers
59 submarines
Talbot-Booth made a good point, but to some extent he was not comparing like with like. Many of the capital ships in 1914 had been obsolescent pre-Dreadnoughts, while the 1914 cruiser was a ship whose size could vary enormously, for although there were substantial armoured cruisers, light cruisers could be smaller than a twenty-first century destroyer. Many of the pre-First World War torpedo craft were supposed to be torpedo-boat destroyers, and often less than a thousand tons. Nevertheless, he was right inasmuch as the period between the two world wars had not been good for any of Britain’s armed services, and it certainly had not been good for the Royal Navy. The First World War had marked a turning point. The nation that had prided itself on maintaining a fleet that was the equivalent of any other two foreign navies, the so-called ‘Two Power Standard’, had nearly been brought to its knees by a combination of the German U-boat menace and the reluctance of the Admiralty to institute a convoy system. The Battle of Jutland in 1916 had proved to be anything but decisive. On paper, the Royal Navy had lost, suffering heavier casualties in men and ships than the German Navy, although a strategic victory could be claimed as the German High Seas Fleet put back into port. The introduction of convoys and a sea blockade of Germany eventually meant that it was the Germans who were brought to the point of starvation.
